New Learner.

[shushu45]

I want to know more on s/h. Is there a good page or a book I can find that has a lot of simple to read information on s/h?? And I also want to know for u all as well on ur take on s/h. Please

Thank u.

[tucker85]

Welcome to Orchid Board! Here's a link to Ray's page. He's the one who first developed S/H.

Semi-hydroponics Orchid Plants T5 Lighting

[shushu45]

I'm not new to orchidboard. I'm new to s/h though.

Thank u a lot.

[Ryan.Walsh]

The link posted above answers the first part of your question, also I wanted to add reading all of the posts in this subforum.

Regarding personal experiences, I'll take a stab at that. SH, like bark, sphagnum etc. is simply a growing method and has its pros and cons. Pros are that the media is inert and doesn't break down easily, it allows a lot of air space at the roots, and is impossible to over water with. Cons are that plants are often slow to adapt, it DOES NOT do well as a recovery media, and those with low humidity may have a problem with too much evaporation.

I have really high humidity so many of these cons don't affect me but I will say that over the last two years I have been doing SH, I've learned to only put very healthy plants into it. A plant with poor roots will not do well in SH. My alternative now has been to take a plant with little roots, grow out a good root system for 4-6 months in sphagnum and then transfer it to SH. Sphagnum -> SH is a seamless transition while bark -> SH will result (sometimes) in a loss of many roots. The former is a wet, airy (in theory) media and the roots will easily transition between the two while the latter dries out much more frequently and the transition will require the roots to adapt. This is not to say bark-> SH will not be an easy transition, it's just that often times you lose many of the original roots. This is the reason it is so important to use a healthy, actively growing (roots) plant when making the switch.

Also it helps to do your homework, personally I would never put a Vanda or Tolumnia into SH, it's just too wet.

[shushu45]

What r the list of things I need to get in order to start transitioning my orchids??

[Ryan.Walsh]

This: and this says it better than I could (and with pictures).

Basically you need some LECA and some pots with two wholes drilled 1-1.5 up on the side. LECA has many different brand names such as Hydroton, Primeagra etc. but I don't find the brand matters that much. There are definitely diffrences between brands but that is a whole 'nother thread.

Fertilizer is up to you. Lots of people use MSU or K-lite but pretty much any good orchid fertilizer is going to be fine. So long as it's a complete fertilizer with calcium and magnesium you should be ok. If it doesn't have Ca and Mg it wasn't a good orchid fertilizer in the first place.

A heat mat, like ones used to start seedlings indoors, will certainly speed the adaptation process up but isn't strictly necessary. I have a heat mat but have never used it on the orchids I've switched.

As mentioned before, timing is absolutely key. I would not switch anything that isn't actively growing roots, this means you can see the white root tips. I think this gets overlooked a lot, and I can say when I started I definitely ignored this. To put it plainly actively growing roots=easy transition, no growing roots= possible failure, no/little roots=probable failure. Obviously there are always exceptions but this has been my experience with SH.

[shushu45]

So with the roots. Green tip means go and white tip means no go?? To simplify it.

[Ryan.Walsh]

Maybe, actively growing root tips look as follows. Terrestrials will just have white tips while epiphytes will have a light green root tip.

---------- Post added at 07:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:12 PM ----------

[/COLOR]Ok, this:



and this:



are what actively growing roots look like on an epiphyte. A terrestrial species just looks white (no white behind). I'm having a hard time getting a picture of that through the pot and with my cell phone. These are both plants that are mounted or in traditional pots btw.

I apologize in advance for the yellow color, that's due to the lights on my orchids.

[shushu45]

Ok I see it now. Thank I a lot.